Interviews

Will Wright Comic-Con Spore Interview

We speak with the game designer about his vision for a game that inspires people, intellectually and creatively.

Will Wright drew in huge crowds for his Comic-Con presentation, which detailed his inspirations for the game Spore and delved into the evolution of technology as art. Afterward, he stunned them with a live demo of Spore in action. Moments before he took the stage, we managed to pull the veteran game designer aside to chat with us about his goals for the game and the creative push-and-pull that went on behind the scenes.

GameSpy: Why Comic-Con? Why choose this particular event as a venue to talk about a game like Spore?

Will Wright: Comic-Con has become, well, almost like a... celebration of pop culture. It's not really just comics, it's games, movies, TV shows... And it's interesting because it's fan-driven. I think half the reason people come to Comic-Con isn't so much the exhibits, it's to see the other fans. And what they're doing, how they're dressed... It's already got this kind of user-orientation.

GameSpy: It's got a very "homebrew" feel.

Wright: Like how we have indie games. It's user-driven content. Comic-Con is being driven, I think, by the same underlying forces.

GameSpy: That's a really good point, that fits in well with user-driven titles like Spore. Speaking of Spore, what kind of message are you trying to get across -- if any -- with the game? What do you want fans to take away from it?

Wright: We have a lot of low-level concepts and ideas. But at the end of the day, what I really wanted players to feel was motivation and interest in the subjects that Spore is built on top of. It's not so much that Spore is trying to educate them and teach them about astronomy or evolution, but I want them to understand the context of that. You know? All the sciences, and why that's cool and interesting.